Hot Docs 2019 Reviews: Human Nature

Apr 30, 2019- Permalink

Human Nature

Adam Bolt’s Human Nature examines one of the ethical dilemmas faced by the medical field. The discovery of clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats or CRISPR means that there’s an ability to manipulate human DNA. On one side there’s a chance that many diseases and conditions could be eradicated. On their other side it raises the specter of designer babies. Want a tall blond athlete who’ll be good at sports and piano? The film talks to people in the field and those afflicted and raises the question, if we can design our future, should we?

The film could talk in abstract to the scientists and ethicists, but it also looks at the human side. One of the subjects is David Sanchez, a bright, inquisitive young man. He has sickle-cell anemia and in the future it might be able to be detected in the womb and altered, but you’ll be surprised by his views on the issue.